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Hmm. I’m not sure about the hot water reason. I guess I believe it. I’ve never lived anywhere where it’s that cut and dried, though. Only one week out of 52?!? And it does seem like they really do maintenance during the off times. Here they turned the hot water off permanently years ago. So, now the cold is more like Russia’s hot. It comes and goes as it wishes. They also turn it off every night, for “economy.” But I’ve always wondered, how does that save much?

I assume turning the hot water off really is an economic move. A lot of Ukrainian cities have done it. (I remember trying to convince a certain American engineer that you and I both know that it really was hot water in those insulated pipes everywhere. He insisted that no one would do something so inefficient as pipe hot water from a central location out into the city. )

I was thinking that you might have been there, but I couldn’t remember. It was an often and ongoing subject of conversation that summer. We finally convinced him, when we found a place that the insulation was peeling back, so that he could see and feel for himself.

Currently Reading: “Midnight in Siberia” by David Greene

“The trip has been grueling, frustrating, exciting, with unexpected twists at every step…often I’m in the dark because I don’t know the language. …what a metaphor for how Russians approach their lives. In a way I feel that’s how the Russian government keeps citizens in the dark – laws are never clear, courts are unreliable, punishments are arbitrary – it’s like living in a place where the people in charge are speaking a language you never understand. And consider what that does to any impulse to speak up.”

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